Who was the REAL Prince? Interesting LIFE facts about the legendary musician.

Tributes are pouring in from all over the world for musician Prince, who died Thursday at the age of 57. The legendary entertainer was pretty private, so I found these facts about him to be very interesting. I hope you do too. – Nancy

1. Prince WAS his real name. His full name was Prince Rogers Nelson.

2. He wrote his first song at the age of seven. It was called “Funk Machine”.

3. He said he was once so poor that he’d just SMELL food instead of eating it. Quote, “I didn’t have any money, so I’d just stand outside McDonald’s and smell stuff.” When he died, he was reportedly worth $300 million.

4. His song “When Doves Cry” was revolutionary because it was the first major R&B hit not to include a bass line.

5. The guy who directed “Purple Rain” was Albert Magnoli, and he said Prince’s favorite meal when the movie was being made was spaghetti and orange juice.

6. Michael Jackson wrote “Bad” with the intention of singing it as a duet with Prince, but Prince wasn’t comfortable with the lyrics. Specifically, he didn’t like the opening line, “Your butt is mine.”

A friend of Prince’s once said, quote, “Prince was like, ‘Oh, [Michael] wants me to punk out on record. Who does he think I am, crazy?'”

7. Prince became a Jehovah’s Witness around 1997, and then dropped his more sexually explicit material from his concerts. He also avoided writing overtly sexy songs for many years.

8. Prince changed his name to the unpronounceable “love symbol” in the mid-’90s as a way of striking back against his label Warner Brothers. He went back to being called Prince in 2000 after all his contracts with them expired.

9. It was a combination of the symbols for male and female . . . and it was a headache for Warner Brothers. They sent out a mass mailing of floppy disks with the symbol in a custom font so that his “name” could be used in print media. Of course, most people just called him “The Artist Formerly Known as Prince.”

10. Prince did very little acting outside of his own stuff, but apparently he was a huge fan of “New Girl”. He sent an email to Zooey Deschanel asking to appear on the show. He said it was the only thing he watched other than the news. So he did a guest-spot playing himself in an episode that aired after the 2014 Super Bowl.